After she had a quick bite to eat her curiosity got the better of her and she headed back to the tunnel. Armed with only her LCD keychain flashlight, she crawled over the barricade and cautiously walked down the concrete steps. It turned out that there were a dozen steps in total. When she arrived at the bottom her flashlight came across a metallic box on the wall with a lever on the side of it. She took this to be a power switch and flipped the lever.

She could hear a slight buzzing noise and then some lights overhead illuminated, showing a long tunnel. There were some dark spots which she assumed were due to burnt light bulbs. She was actually quite surprised that there were some that weren’t burnt. With the lights on she could see large arrows painted on the wall pointing inwards to the tunnel. She also saw several large looking cobwebs. She went back outside to grab a stick she had seen lying on the ground. She’d use this to help clear the cobwebs out of her way.

She placed her keychain back in her pocket and decided to see where the tunnel led. She walked roughly 50 meters before the tunnel made a sharp right turn. She was starting to get the smell of something musty. She figured that the air would be stale but it really wasn’t. The further she went in the tunnel the less stale it seemed. She walked another 20 meters before coming across a large steel door that looked more like a door to a vault.

The doorway led into a large room but without all the lights working it was hard for her to see how large it actually was. There were long rows of bunk beds along the walls and a whole bunch of tables and chairs in the middle of the room. There was a sign near the door detailing what to do in the case of a nuclear strike. It was a bomb shelter!

Beneath the sign was a clipboard with some documentation. The shelter was provided by the rail road company, for its passengers. The maximum recommended capacity was 250 people. The documentation also indicated that there was enough food and water for 1 month. There was also a backup generator in case the shelter lost power.

She decided to explore the room further. She ran her finger across the surface of a table and picked up several decades worth of dust. She slapped her hands together to shake off the dust and then wiped the remains on her pants. When she got to the back end of the room she noticed something strange. It appeared that one of the bunk beds had been made and that the covers were in disarray. There also appeared to be several cans and bottles strewn around the base of the bed.

It looked like someone was living in the shelter. Just then she heard a scraping sound from the direction of the door, which was followed by a metallic screeching sound. The vault door had slammed shut. It took her a minute to comprehend what just had happened. “No, no, no, no, no, no, noooooooooo!” She ran to the door and slapped it with her hands; they made a dull thudding sound. “Hey! Wait! There’s someone in here!!!”

After about a minute she realized that the door was too thick for any sounds to get through. She grabbed her cell phone from her purse and cursed. “There’s no signal in here. Oh crap, crap, crap, crap!” She ran around the room looking for another way out. In one corner was a door that led to the supply room and in another corner was a door that led to the washrooms. She tried one of the taps and the water was initially rusty but soon ran clear. At least she’d have drinkable water. She heard the scraping sound coming from behind her. She turned around and let out a high pitched scream.